Letter From the Editor Vol.12

Dallas and the Texan Culinary Landscape

February 2007

After spending two intensive weeks tasting with
chefs in Dallas—from fine dining to bistro and pastry shop
to hotels, we’ve got a lot to share! The wide-ranging scene
in Dallas—from roadside Tex-Mex trailers to fine dining offers
its diners thrills…

Fine dining takes on many exciting forms—see how David Gilbert’s
interactive, modern dishes at Luqa manage
to make high-concept accessible in our Play
with Your Food feature. Fine dining is subtly Southwestern at
Stephan Pyles where Pyles and pastry chef
Katherine Clapner’s whimsical but sophisticated dishes incorporate
traditional Peruvian techniques and ingredients. Even the charming
and elegant space reveals Pyle’s passion for all things Texan
in understated touches like blown glass lamps reminiscent of cacti
and a floating tumbleweed art installation.

Women run two of the most brilliant restaurants in town. At Local
Tracy Miller’s vision comes together in delicately composed
dishes and high concept minimalist design that retains a sense of
warmth and personality. Similarly, at York Street,
Sharon Hage sends out some of the most well-balanced and deeply-flavored
dishes in Dallas from her miniscule kitchen. While Craft
doesn’t seem to fit in this mold (Chef Kevin
Maxey is neither a woman nor the owner of his restaurant) his rustic
and elegant dishes carry the same unpretentious, soulful vibe and
tend to focus on just a few seasonal flavors.

While familiar chain restaurants dominate the casual dining scene
in Dallas, there are plenty of chef-driven concepts where personal
and polished dishes arrive in an intimate and casual atmosphere.
Doug Brown and Jason Foss’ Amuse
in the South Side is a bustling, comfortable space packed with diners
looking for high quality, down-to-earth food on a budget. At Kitchen
1924, Colleen O’Hare’s bistro-inspired
dishes convey a real sense of who she is as a chef with the simplicity
of hemp-seeded crusted frog legs. Abraham Salum plays with Southern
fundamentals in Restaurant Salum, covering
shrimp in crispy hush puppy batter as part of his comfort-centric
menu.

As many chefs confided, food industry trends that start in New
York or San Francisco and move inward, take a little longer to reach
the Lone Star state. It seems that with Nobu’s recent opening,
the trend of modern Asian fusion is only just starting to catch
on. At restaurants like Shinsei, Casey
Thompson and Shuji Shugawara pair sweet glazed short ribs with soba
noodles or raw tuna with jalapenos. Downtown at self-proclaimed
“Tex-Asian” Fuse, Blaine
Staniford experiments with savory cauliflower panna cottas, spicy
curry oil, and hard-boiled quail eggs, garnished with crispy pork
rinds. Check out Staniford's, along with other Dallas chefs' notable
presentations, in our
On the Platefeature.

While the city is remarkably low on pastry chefs (lots of kitchens
outsource or have their chef de cuisine develop the menu for both
sections) there are a couple of stand out pastry-focused shops.
These Texan bakeries and patisseries aren’t all about large
portions and high sugar content. Standards for presentation and
flavor are high at Doughmonkey, where
Rhonda Ruckman creates modern, elegantly composed desserts and sells
her wholesale pastries to a number of Dallas restaurants lacking
in the pastry chef department. At Petit Fours Cakes,
Bill Hunter creates a full sweet and savory tea service with miniature
layered cakes and scrumptious finger sandwiches.

So many chefs are shaping the Texan culinary landscape plate by
plate that you should expect a lot more Dallas chefs on StarChefs
in the upcoming months as we share our findings. And stay tuned
for our Dallas Rising Stars announcements.